Pages tagged "Author Theodore Landsman"

Last week, Real Clear Politics extrapolated demographic trends to project which states are likely to gain or lose U.S. House seats in the reapportionment that will occur after the 2020 Census. Their forecast has nine states losing one U.S. House seat and six states gaining seats. These are only projections, but given that we are now six years into the decade, many of the demographic shifts of the decade are already well advanced and difficult to reverse.

A review of undervotes in Bay Area elections suggest that the percentage of voters at the polls for state and national election are no more likely to skip local elections with ranked choice voting than those held without ranked choice voting.

For all but a few of these voters, the outcomes of U.S. House races are all-but predetermined. FairVote projects that the Democrats are certain win 158 seats, and Republicans 195, the remaining 82 races are less certain, but only a handful are truly competitive. Our full forecast is 192 seats for the Democrats, 243 seats for the Republicans.

The FairVote presidential tracker, which has been regularly used this fall by National Popular Vote, looks at where major party candidates for president and vice-president have been rallying their supporters at events that are open to the public, free and intended to influence local voters. Our data for the tracker is based on local news reports and the campaigns’ public schedules.

Ranked choice voting has been adopted by several cities in the Bay Area of California and elsewhere to replace a contingent runoff taking place after a November election. One concern for advocates and critics alike is ballot exhaustion, but the data shows reason for optimism.

FairVote’s model of U.S. House of Representatives elections shows that House elections are so uncompetitive and skewed that it is unlikely that even a Clinton landslide would deliver Democrats the House.

Growing up in New York City, I was always an idealist when it came to politics -- a trait which grew deeper after attending an Obama presidential campaign rally in 2008 with my parents, and marching with Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Then I made the decision to major in political science and canvassed for several campaigns. The reality of American politics both academically and from on-the-ground outreach transformed me into something more of a political cynic or (more optimistically) realist. Working at FairVote offers me the ideal outlet for my idealist and realist impulse: to call out the current electoral system and political climate as broken, and champion real, proven reform.